5 Political Aspects of Central Asian

The five political aspects of central Asian are as follows: 1. The Indo-Greeks 2. The Shakas 3. The Parthians 4. The Kushans 5. The Indo-Sassanians.

The period that began in about 200 BC did not witness a large empire like that of the Mauryas, but it is notable for intimate and widespread contacts between Central Asia and India.

In the eastern and central parts of India and in the Deccan, the Mauryas were succeeded by several native rulers such as the Shungas, the Kanvas, and the Satavahanas. In north-western India they were succeeded by a number of ruling dynasties from Central Asia. Of them, the Kushans became the most famous.

1. The Indo-Greeks:

A series of invasions began in about 200 BC. The first to cross the Hindu Kush were the Greeks, who ruled Bactria, or Bahlika, situated south of the Oxus river in the area covered by north Afghanistan. The invaders came one after another, but some of them ruled simultaneously.

One important cause of the invasions was the weakness of the Seleucid empire that had been established in Bactria and the adjoining areas of Iran called Parthia. On account of growing pressure from the Scythian tribes, the later Greek rulers were unable to sustain power in this area. With the construction of the Chinese wall, the Scythians were pushed back from the Chinese border. They therefore turned their attention towards the neighbouring Greeks and Parthians.

Pushed by the Scythian tribes, the Bactrian Greeks were forced to invade India. The successors of Ashoka were too weak to stem the tide of foreign invasions that began during this period. The first to invade India were the Greeks, who are called the Indo- Greeks or Indo-Bactrians. In the beginning of the second century BC, the Indo-Greeks occupied a large part of north-western India, a much larger area than that conquered by Alexander. It is said that they pushed forward as far as Ayodhya and Pataliputra.

However, the Greeks failed to establish united rule in India. Two Greek dynasties simultaneously ruled north­western India on parallel lines. The most famous Indo-Greek ruler was Menander (165-45 BC), also known as Milinda. He had his capital at Sakala (modern Sialkot) in the Punjab; and invaded the Ganga-Yamuna doab. He had a great many cities in his dominions including Sakala and Mathura. He is known for the variety and wide spread of coins in his dominions. He was converted to Buddhism by Nagasena, who is also known as Nagarjuna.

Menander asked Nagasena many questions relating to Buddhism. These questions and Nagasenas answers were recorded in the form of a book known as Milinda Panho or the Questions of Milinda. Indo-Greek rule is important in the history of India because of the large number of coins that the Greeks issued. The Indo-Greeks were the first rulers in India to issue coins that can be definitively attributed to particular kings. This is not possible in the case of the early punch-marked coins, which cannot be assigned with certainty to any particular dynasty.

The Indo-Greeks were also the first to issue gold coins in India, and these increased in number under the Kushans. Greek rule introduced features of Hellenistic art in the north-west frontier of India, but this was not purely Greek but the outcome of Greek contact with non-Greek conquered peoples after Alexander s death. The best example of this was Gandhara art.

2. The Shakas:

The Greeks were followed by the Shakas. The Shakas or the Scythians destroyed Greek power in both Bactria and India, and controlled a much larger part of India than had the Greeks. There were five branches of the Shakas with their seats of power in different parts of India and Afghanistan. One branch of the Shakas settled in Afghanistan; the second in the Punjab with Taxila as their capital; the third in Mathura where they ruled for about two centuries; the fourth branch established its hold over western India, where the Shakas continued to rule until the fourth century; the fifth branch established its power in the upper Deccan.

The Shakas did not face any effective resistance from the rulers and peoples of India. In about 57-58 BC we hear of the king of Ujjain who effectively fought against the Shakas and succeeded in driving them out during his reign. He called himself Vikramaditya, and an era called Vikrama Samvat is reckoned from his victory over the Shakas in 57 BC. From this time onwards, Vikramaditya became a coveted title.

Whoever achieved anything great adopted this tide just as the Roman emperors adopted the title Caesar to demonstrate their great power. As a result of this practice, we have as many as fourteen Vikramadityas in Indian history, Chandragupta II of the Gupta dynasty being the most famous of them. The title continued to be fashionable with the Indian kings till the twelfth century, and it was especially prevalent in the western part of India and the western Deccan.

Although the Shakas established their rule in different parts of the country, only those who ruled in western India held power for any considerable length of time, for about four centuries or so. They benefited from the sea-borne trade in Gujarat and issued numerous silver coins. The most famous Shaka ruler in India was Rudradaman I (ad 130-50).

He ruled not only over Sindh, but also over a substantial part of Gujarat, Konkan, the Narmada valley, Malwa, and Kathiawar. He is famous in history because of the repairs he undertook to improve the Sudarshana lake in the semi-arid zone of Kathiawar which had been in use for irrigation for a long time and dated back to the Mauryas. Rudradaman was a great lover of Sanskrit. Although he had Central Asian ancestors, he issued the first-ever long inscription in chaste Sanskrit. All the earlier longer inscriptions that we have in India were composed in Prakrit which had been made the state language by Ashoka.

3. The Parthians:

Shaka domination in north-western India was followed by that of the Parthians, and in many ancient Indian Sanskrit texts, the two people are mentioned together as Shaka-Pahlavas. In fact, both of them ruled over India in parallel for some time. Originally the Parthians or the Pahlavas lived in Iran from where they moved to India. In comparison to the Greeks and the Shakas, they occupied only a small portion of north-western India in the first century AD. The most famous Parthian king was Gondophernes during whose reign St Thomas is said to have come to India to propagate Christianity. In course of time, the Parthians, like the Shakas before them, became an integral part of Indian polity and society.

4. The Kushans:

The Parthians were followed by the Kushans, who are also called Yuechis or Tocharians. The Tocharians were considered to be the same as the Scythians. The Kushans were one of the five clans into which the Yuechi tribe was divided. A nomadic people from the steppes of north Central Asia living in the neighbourhood of China, the Kushans first occupied Bactria or north Afghanistan where they displaced the Shakas. Gradually they moved to the Kabul valley and seized Gandhara by crossing the Hindu Kush, replacing the rule of the Greeks and Parthians in these areas. They eventually established their authority over the lower Indus basin and the greater part of the Gangetic basin.

Their empire extended from the Oxus to the Ganges, from Khorasan in Central Asia to Pataliputra in Bihar. A substantial part of Central Asia now included in the Commonwealth of Independent States (in the former USSR), a portion of Iran, a portion of Afghanistan, almost the whole of Pakistan, and almost the whole of northern India were brought under one rule by the Kushans. Because of this, the Kushan empire in India is sometimes called a Central Asian empire.

In any case, the empire created a unique opportunity for the interaction of peoples and cultures, and the process gave rise to a new type of culture which embraced nine modern countries. There were two successive dynasties of Kushans. The first was founded by a house of chiefs who were called Kadphises and who ruled for twenty- eight years from about ad 50 under two kings. The first was Kadphises I, who issued coins south of the Hindu Kush, minting copper coins in imitation of Roman coins. The second king was Kadphises II, who issued a large number of gold money and spread his kingdom east of the Indus.

The house of Kadphises was succeeded by that of Kanishka. Its kings extended Kushan power over upper India and the lower Indus basin. The early Kushan kings issued numerous gold coins with a higher degree of metallic purity than is found in the Gupta gold coins.

Although the gold coins of the Kushans are found mainly west of the Indus, their inscriptions are distributed not only in north-western India and Sindh but also in Mathura, Shravasti, Kaushambi, and Varanasi. Hence, besides the Ganga— Yamuna doab they had established their authority in the greater part of the middle Gangetic basin. Kushan coins, inscriptions, constructions, and pieces of sculpture found in Mathura show that it was their second capital in India, the first being Purushapura or Peshawar, where Kanishka erected a monastery and a huge stupa or relic tower which excited the wonder of foreign travellers.

Kanishka was the most famous Kushan ruler. Although outside the borders of India, he seems to have suffered defeat at the hands of the Chinese, he is known to history for two reasons. First, he started an era in AD 78, which is now known as the Shaka era and is used by the Government of India. Secondly, Kanishka extended his wholehearted patronage to Buddhism. He held a Buddhist council in Kashmir, where the doctrines of the Mahayana form of Buddhism were finalized.

Kanishka was also a great patron of art and architecture. Kanishka’s successors continued to rule in north-western India till about AD 230, and some of them bore a typical Indian name such as Vasudeva. The Kushan empire in Afghanistan and in the area west of the Indus was supplanted in the mid-third century by the Sassanian power which originated in Iran. However, Kushan principalities continued to exist in India for about a century. The Kushan authority seems to have lingered in the Kabul valley, Kapisa, Bactria, Khorezm, and Sogdiana (coterminous with Bokhara and Samarkand in Central Asia) in the third-fourth centuries.

Many Kushan coins, inscriptions, and terracottas have been found in these areas. This is especially so at a place called Toprak-Kala in Khorezm, situated south of the Aral Sea on the Oxus, where a huge Kushan palace of the third—fourth centuries has been unearthed. It housed an administrative archive containing inscriptions and documents written in Aramaic script and the Khorezmian language.

5. The Indo-Sassanians:

However, by the middle of the third century, the Sassanians had occupied the lower Indus region. Initially they called this region Hindu, not in the sense of religion but in the sense of the Indus people. A Sassanian inscription of ad 262 uses the term Hindustan for this region. Thus the term Hindustan used for India in Mughal and modern times was first used in the third century AD. The Sassanians, also called the Indo-Sassanians, ruled in India for less than a century but they contributed to the Indian economy by issuing a large number of coins.